


Sharing Stories around a Fire

by wmblake



Series: Parkner Halloween Week 2019 [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Camping, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Scary Stories, Sharing A Tent, parkner halloween week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 13:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wmblake/pseuds/wmblake
Summary: It's a Halloween tradition to tell scary stories around a campfire. Peter doesn't think much of the tradition, but at least Harley's there to comfort him afterwards.





	Sharing Stories around a Fire

**Author's Note:**

> A heads-up: while there is no graphic descriptions of violence, there is talk of gore, with few details given, but still.
> 
> Also, a shout-out to bellabeatrice/parknerplease: I wouldn't have finished this anywhere remotely close to on-time without some inspiration from your story "Nothing Scarier than a Broken Heart" (find it at https://archiveofourown.org/works/21186509, warning: Major Character Death)

“Scary stories are obligatory on Halloween camping trips,” MJ said. “We set up the campfire and everything already.”

“I thought the campfire was for marshmallows,” Peter complained. “You always tell the scariest stories and none of _you_ guys have to deal with super-powered paranoia.”

“I think the Peter Tingle’s pretty cool,” Ned defended.

“That’s because you don’t wake up on your ceiling because some bird landing on the fire escape is seen as a threat.” Peter crossed his arms. “And can we _please_ stop calling it the Peter Tingle.”

Harley grinned, smug and teasing and all too attractive. Peter's heart thudded in his ears, in his throat. “Don't worry,” Harley drawled, “I’ll protect you from any monsters.”

“You—but—I—” Peter flushed. MJ took this as her opportunity.

“Perfect,” she said. “So we’re telling scary stories. Who wants to start?”

Ned shrugged. “Might as well.” Peter shot him a look.

“Traitor,” he hissed. Ned just smiled.

“So,” he began, “this is a story my cousin told me, says a guy he talked to a lot on Reddit sent him the message—”

“We are _not_ telling ‘true’ horror stories, come on, Ned, please,” Peter interrupted. Ned shrugged.

“It’s the only one I’ve got, really, so what’re you gonna do?” Peter glared at him. “Anyway,” he continued, “I can’t _exactly_ confirm the veracity of the story, but my cousin also hasn’t heard from the guy—his handle was selfishpudding, or something like that—since then.”

Harley snorted at the handle. Peter shot him a glare, too, already on edge from the anticipation of being scared or horrified or disgusted or otherwise unpleasant.

“But because I don’t want to say ‘selfishpudding’ every time I refer to the guy, let’s just call him Alex. So Alex was a known gamer in my cousin’s circle—no major streaming or anything, but they trusted each other’s judgment on what games were good, whether or not a horror game was actually scary, if a reboot was a good idea or if they should all just wait until the next one inevitably came out and see if that one would live up to snuff. Stuff like that.

“Alex was selected by some indie game company they all liked to beta test a game of theirs. Alex, of course, jumped for joy and agreed, NDAs and all. He couldn’t tell anyone much, but he could tell them that he couldn’t tell them much, and why. My cousin was so jealous I thought his skin would turn green. Not a good color for him, you know?” Ned laughed at his own joke. “Anyway, it went like that for a while. Alex updating the group as much as he could, but he was offline most of the time. Says he was playing the game, really absorbed, like he couldn’t put it down. Immersive, especially for a beta version.

“Alex shows up online less and less. My cousin and the gang get pretty worried. When he does pop up, he starts sounding—off, at first. A little frazzled. They ask him about it, and he just says that he hasn’t been sleeping well—too busy playing the game, he jokes, but then says that he’s been having nightmares. Like if reality mixed with the game and then got turned upside down.

“They tell him he should take a break from the game, get outside, leave it alone for a while until he can sleep right again.” Ned shook his head. “From what my cousin tells me, the guy really should’ve listened. But, in response, Alex makes some noncommittal answer about trying to sleep better, but everyone can tell he really just wants to get back to the game at this point.

“They don’t hear from him again. Until, maybe a month later, he messages my cousin. All in one message, but it’s like he wrote pages’ worth of explanation. It’s all against the NDA he signed, but he says the game shouldn’t be released anyway, so he obviously doesn’t think it matters. My cousin certainly doesn’t think it was corporate that caught him.

“But the message starts with a warning. Don’t play a game called Nightowl.”

Ned paused for dramatic effect. The fire crackled, like a log was splitting—Peter jumped at the sound. Harley looked to him, confused and concerned. Peter nodded towards the firewood, but—looking at it, a log hadn’t split. It must have just been some water pocket expanding, maybe even too small for the others to hear. _Stupid super-hearing._

“Alex said the game started normal. A pretty standard basis for a horror game, actually. The PC’s a detective, hardened from working some major city’s streets before moving to a small town to escape a divorce or similar emotional turmoil. The townsfolk are wary of strangers and hesitant to talk to the detective, but a kid goes missing and the detective is determined to find him, no matter what.

“The game starts three months into the case, when everyone else in the local police is convinced it’s gone too cold to ever find the kid. Then a girl goes missing, same age as the last kid, same circumstances. The game plays like a standard find-all-the-evidence game, until the PC has got everything they can get from the town—it all leads to the forest.

“Now, there’s some bonus material here, that isn’t necessary for gameplay but that Alex uncovered. There’s a lore section in the library the PC can access while looking through newspaper clippings, if you think to look for previous cases like these two. Turns out, the forest has a bunch of old stories about children disappearing, people wandering inside and never coming back, even some stuff about weird music playing from within, will-o’-wisps, some Pied Piper or evil Peter Pan type stuff.

“Just before Alex leads the PC into the forest is when his dreams start getting freaky. It starts with hearing tapping on his windows, or hearing owls’ screeching as he’s going to sleep, in the dream. Progresses to hearing a type of music, like on a set of pipes or some other wind instrument, when all he really should be hearing is wind.

“But he ignores it and keeps playing the game. Goes into the woods. Since he read the lore, he thinks he knows well enough not to eat anything, and he’s already thinking of a fake name to give the PC if he needs one quickly. Problem is, the game has him walk through the forest for almost a whole week. Both in-game and out, it takes him a week. And the forest doesn’t loop or anything, each part looks different, and detailed, from the bark of the trees to the shapes of their branches to the inclusion of different types of fungi as the PC walks into denser and denser portions.

“He comes across this banquet. The food’s so detailed it makes Alex’s stomach rumble. He tries to keep the PC from getting too close, but a cut-scene must start. The PC goes to the table and gorges on the food there. As this happens, music on some wind instrument starts—and it’s just like what Alex was hearing in his dreams.

“Alex keeps going, though. Maybe half a day later, he comes across the first NPC he’s seen in the forest. It’s a woman, living in a makeshift house that’s some kind of cross between a tent and a cabin made more of stretched fabric than wood. He goes to talk to her, to ask her what she’s doing in the forest, if she’s seen any kids, etc.

“The dialogue box opens. And then a keyboard appears on the screen. Alex is, of course, surprised, because he’s supposed to type what he says to the woman, and most video games just don’t have those kinds of dialogue options. So he types ‘what are you doing in the woods?’ and the woman looks at the PC and about bursts into tears.

“‘I’m stuck in here,’ she says. ‘I came in to look for the kids, but now I can’t leave—they won’t _let_ me leave.’

“Alex responds with ‘who are they?’ but the question leads the woman into hysterics. She starts screaming, raving about how asking questions is how she got into this fix in the first place, and he’ll end up just like her if he keeps it up. She tells him to leave the forest, if he can, if it’s not too late.” Ned smiled. “Alex, the PC having already eaten in the forest, figured it might already be too late, but hoped his character wasn’t condemned due to a cut-scene. After all, how’s he supposed to win if it’s a _cut-scene_ that gets in the way.

“He continues on his way. He saves somewhere around then and passes out for a good twelve hours, having not slept in about thirty-six. He dreams about a woman yelling at him, silently, but he can catch a couple of the words she says. ‘Idiot’ is the main one, ‘trap’ another, but then he hears a child crying and rushes to find where that’s coming from.

“He finds a little girl, maybe six or seven, sitting on the ground with a scraped knee. Her face is dirty, with tear tracks running down her cheeks. He tries to comfort her, but she’s almost inconsolable. ‘Save me, mister,’ she says. ‘I’m lost and I can’t find my way out.’

“He wakes up with the burning need to get back to the game, still in an almost-asleep haze, like he hasn’t quite yet remembered where and who he is. The game’s already booted up by the time he’s wholly awake, so he keeps walking. The music is soft, hardly there in some cases, and that’s why he hears it. A child crying. The volume of it changes depending on which direction he goes, so he turns his audio all the way up and tracks down the kid by sound alone. He finds her.

“She looks just like from his dream. Scraped knee, dirty face, crying. She begs him, ‘Save me, mister. I’m lost and I can’t find my way out. You have to save me. You have to, Alex.’

“Now, she called him by his name. Not by the PC’s name. He, at this point, feels sick. He shuts off the game. Goes for a run. Sees a forest near his house that he’d never seen before, that had never been there before—and he hears music from it, the same music from his dream, from the game. He turns around and runs the other way. Thinks he hears a kid crying as he does.

“He goes to the library. Looks into any recent disappearances. A little boy three months ago, and a little girl just a little more than a week ago. Looks into lore. Finds books dated over fifty years old talking about legends from before the revolutionary war talking about the forest—the one that he never been there—and about disappearances around it.

“He stays out of his house as long as possible, but he’s got to go to sleep at some point, so he goes home and goes to sleep on his couch, not wanting to even be in the same room as the video game. He dreams of the forest again that night, but instead of seeing or hearing the woman or the kids, he finds this—ethereal-looking person that he can only see out of the corner of his eye. They’re too tall for him to see even their shoulders, and they’re glowing. They look like they’re built from white fire. ‘You owe us a debt,’ they say. ‘You took from us and now you must give back.’

“Alex wakes up to the sound of crying children, begging him to rescue them. He typed the message to my cousin after that. He ended it saying he was going to try to get them, try to bring them back.” Ned shrugged. “I guess he never did, if he never messaged my cousin back. But maybe time just moves weird in there. Maybe he’ll come back out.”

“There’s no way that’s true,” Peter protested. “C’mon, Ned, really?”

Ned just shrugged again, this time with a smile. “I don’t know, Peter. Do you think it’s true?”

Peter screwed up his face at Ned, who only laughed.

“Why don’t you tell the next one then, Peter,” MJ suggested. Peter crossed his arms. “It’s tradition.”

“Fine. There was once a family. A husband, a wife, and two kids, an older sister and a younger brother. The wife just had a miscarriage, or the husband just returned from a tour in a war, but either way they’re emotionally distant and kind of dysfunctional. The tension between them plays out with the kids, too, the sister struggling to get the emotional fulfillment she needs out of only her friends and the brother trying to suppress all his emotions, because that’s what his dad is doing.”

“Cliche much?” Harley teased.

Peter looked him in the eye and kept going. “They move to a new house in a more rural area than they lived in before, to get a ‘fresh start.’ The sister complains about a lack of service, because it terrifies her to not have her support system available. The brother goes poking around in the house and finds something weird in the basement. He messes with it. It inevitably releases or invites or whatever something into the house. The wife is the first one to notice that strange things are happening, like things moving or she starts seeing things or hearing stuff. She tells her husband, he of course doesn’t believe her, things get worse as tension between them rise.

“The sister gets attacked by the thing one night. She screams. The whole family rushes in her room to help, but by the time they’re there, she’s just panicking in her bed, arms and face scratched but otherwise left with no evidence of something having been there. The wife and the brother believe her story, but the husband does not. The three start prepping for something, trying to take precautions, but the husband thwarts their goals. The thing comes back. This time, when it attacks, the brother and the sister are together. The brother gets badly injured and the sister dies. The wife screams at her husband, ‘do you believe me now?’ He stares, still in denial.

“They have a funeral. It’s very sad. The brother returns to the house with a conviction to handle whatever the thing is. The wife helps him. The husband still doesn’t believe, but doesn’t directly interfere anymore. That night, it’s a full moon and the clock chimes midnight. There’s a showdown, which isn’t much of a showdown, because, really, the thing splits the three up. Kills the brother and then the wife and then the husband wakes from some kind of conjured vision to find them both at his feet, dead, and his hands bloodied, holding a knife.

“The neighbors heard screaming, so the cops show up. They arrest the husband as he raves about something in the house killing his family. He gets declared guilty but mentally ill and spends the rest of his life trying to convince anyone who will listen that something else, something he can’t explain, killed his family. The end.”

“Right, I had forgotten the plot to every haunted-house-is-a-metaphor-for-family-problems horror movie the early 2000s released,” Harley joked. Peter elbowed him with a small smile.

“Shut up, that’s the only story I’ve got. You think you can do better?”

Harley snorted. “Oh, I know I can, darlin’. ‘Sides, MJ always goes last, so it’s my turn anyway.”

Peter pulled a sour face. “MJ tells the scariest stories.”

“Damn right I do,” she cut in. “But it’s Harley’s turn first.”

“Thanks for cedin’ the floor.” Harley nodded to MJ with a grin. “So my story starts a lot like Orpheus and Eurydice. For anyone who wasn’t a Greek mythology nerd when they were younger, Orpheus was the son of Apollo, god of music, and Calliope, muse of eloquence and epic poetry. Orpheus is kept with other immortals most his life, like Hermes, until he falls in love with a mortal named Eurydice. He sings and sings to her, and she doesn’t love him for a while, until she does. They get married, they’re all happy, and then she gets bit by a snake. She dies. He goes to the Underworld to beg Hades to give her back. Persephone hears him singin’ in the fields, is moved by his song, and convinces Hades to give Orpheus a chance. He says that Eurydice’ll follow Orpheus out of the Underworld, but Orpheus can’t look back at her. Unfortunately, Orpheus _does_ look back, he loses her, and then he’s forced out of the land of the dead.

“He then gets torn apart by wild dogs.”

“That’s your story?” Peter asked. “It’s even worse than mine.”

“No, my story is _inspired_ by that. I’m keepin’ the names, for simplicity’s sake, but the story I’m tellin’ is different. But even the original story of Orpheus and Eurydice knows that the scariest story is one of a broken heart.” Harley smiled, but it was his wicked, sharp smile, rather than the soft one that made Peter’s heart skip. “This story starts the same. Orpheus loves Eurydice more than anythin’ else in the world. He sings and sings to her until she loves him, too. They get married and they’re _so_ happy. But they’re apart when Eurydice gets bitten by the snake—they can’t always be side-by-side, after all. So he has to be told about her death, has to know that her last moments were apart from him.

“So he resolves to bend Heaven and Hell to get her back. In this story, though, instead of tryin’ to persuade a god like Hades, known not for being cold-hearted but for followin’ the law of what is—namely, that the dead stay dead, Orpheus goes to the goddess Hecate, the goddess of crossroads and magic, the goddess the witches of Macbeth call upon. She, at least, doesn’t care for what fate has or hasn’t to say.

“She teaches him what it would take to get Eurydice back. Warns him it will cost more than he might be willin’ to give. But Orpheus says there’s nothin’ he wouldn’t give for Eurydice, includin’ his own life. Hecate tuts, says that there are graver things to give than one’s own life. Orpheus, blind as he is with love for Eurydice, doesn’t understand.

“But Hecate teaches him. Bringing someone back from the dead requires an equal sacrifice. More than just hunted beasts, but things of purity, things of thought. Orpheus nods and charms the shepherds and maidens that attended his weddin’ into the forest. Under a full moon, he spills their blood into the ground and stains the moonlight red. Hecate smiles, her teeth like silver, like blades. She, at least, knows what’s really required for bringin’ somebody back from the dead.

“Orpheus goes through all the motions. Says the right words, paints the right sigils, kills the people he needs to, with the exact kind of fixation and dedication that someone needs to resurrect someone.” Harley looked into the fire. “But it’s not just the right sacrifices, or incantations, or symbols. It’s the drive to do it, the _reason_ for it. Orpheus doesn’t regret or hesitate or even question what he’s doin’ for Eurydice, not even if she’d even want him to do this. He’s consumed by the idea of bringin’ her back, of havin’ her again.

“Orpheus sacrifices his humanity in order to get Eurydice back. And come back she does. Barefoot in a circle of corpses, skin already stainin’ with the blood Orpheus spilled. He goes to embrace her, hands bloody, and she steps back.

“‘What have you done?’ she asks him. ‘I’ve saved you,’ he replies, smilin’. ‘I’ve brought you back.’ Eurydice looks down to see her friends, her sisters, slain. ‘You’ve murdered them!’ she cries. ‘Yes, but I did it for _you,’_ Orpheus replies, like that makes everythin’ better. Eurydice stares at him, aghast.

“‘You’re not the man I married,’ she says. ‘You’re not the man I loved.’ She turns to leave, to leave _him,_ Orpheus knows it, that if he lets her go, he will never see her again, and after all this—after all this, how is he supposed to let her get away? He catches her wrist. She struggles. He still has the sacrificial knife in his hand. They slip in the blood, both now stained, so stained that Orpheus can hardly tell that Eurydice is bleedin’ too when he sits up—until she starts gaspin’, blood on her lips.

“‘Eurydice,’ he says. ‘No. No, this isn’t supposed to happen, this isn’t—’ He screams to Hecate, demands that she come and give him what he paid her for. She appears, disdainfully. ‘I gave you what you asked for. I warned you of the consequences. You paid too high a price and lost her for not knowin’ what it was you gave.’

“She leaves Orpheus to grieve. He screams and begs and pleads—until, at last, he calls to Hades. ‘Please. I—I don’t know if I’ll go where she is, but—please, let—somethin’ come and take me away from all this.’ He begs and begs, screams and sings, until the god of the dead opened his gates and let his hounds tear Orpheus apart, draggin’ him past the gates to Asphodel, where Eurydice waited, and into the darkness, where those without humanity, where those guilty of crimes too severe to go unpunished, waited in agony for a respite that would never come.”

Silence echoed around the four. The only sounds came from the fire and the woods, nature unwilling to stop for anyone. Peter and Ned stared at Harley. Harley watched the fire. MJ looked between the three.

“Perhaps it would be … prudent, to save my story for another night. Halloween isn’t for a few more days. We have time for other stories,” MJ said.

Peter sagged with relief and hugged himself. “All right, we’re done with those, then?”

MJ gave him her almost-smile, the one she used when she was laughing at him and he knew that she was, though somewhat tighter now than usual. “Scared, Parker?” she teased. He pouted.

“I really don’t think this is fair,” he grumbled. “I’ve lived through too many near-death experiences for this shit.”

“At least you’ve got Harley to protect you,” MJ pointed out, smug. Peter narrowed his eyes. “Tonight can’t be _all_ bad, if you’re sharing a tent with him, so—”

“I’m going to sleep now,” Peter announced, standing up and just about stalking to his tent—their tent. “Goodnight.”

“Sleep well,” MJ replied.

“See you in the morning,” Ned chimed in.

Harley grinned. “I’ll be in shortly.”

Peter swallowed. He nodded and ducked into the tent. Scrubbed his hands over his face, hot with blush. He closed his eyes, counted down from ten—counted down again from twenty—counted down again from thirty. Took a deep breath. “Everything’s fine,” he murmured. “Everything’s fine.” He crawled into his sleeping bag. Closed his eyes. Waited.

Harley came into the tent not too long after. Peter heard him zip the tent up, then pause a long moment. Peter almost opened his eyes, to say something, but then he heard Harley crawl into his sleeping bag, and figured the moment had passed.

He listened as Harley’s pulled out a notebook or journal or something and a small light, a soft click and the scratch of a pencil against paper. MJ and Ned stayed outside a while longer, until the fire’s crackling grew dim and faded. MJ flipped the pages of a book. Ned snored softly in his tent.

Harley still scribbled on his paper even after MJ’s reading stopped and her breathing slowed.

The late-night animals began to stir, from beetles to rodents to birds. Peter listened to the soft tacking of bugs’ legs on rocks and pebbles nearby.

Harley stopped writing. Clicked the light off and put his notebook away. Peter listened as his breathing slowed as he fell asleep too.

Peter stared into the dark, even the top of the tent obscured. Bugs and birds and other nocturnal things crept in the woods, each cry or creak or shriek making him twitch, everything too loud and too close, only the rustling of the things he couldn’t see to be heard.

He squeezed his eyes shut. A bat chirped to the rest of its colony. Peter flinched. A mouse’s teeth cracked through an insect’s exoskeleton, its shell splintering. An owl fell upon a chipmunk. Peter jumped at the snap of its spine breaking.

He swallowed back bile, his stomach churning. He rolled onto his side. A wave of nausea swept over him. He clenched his teeth against it.

“Peter?”

Harley’s voice, soft and slow from sleep, pulled Peter from the sounds of the forest. He turned to look at him. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Nah, I just wake up durin’ the night a lot.” Harley rubbed his eyes and yawned. Peter smiled. “You a’ight?”

“Uh, yeah, I'm fine.”

“Bullshit.” Harley shook his head. “That you can be both a really good and terrible liar at the same time’s crazy. Tell me what's up.”

“No, there’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“’M already awake, Pete, you might as well tell me.” He shuffled around. “’M gonna turn on a light, a’ight?”

“No, really, you can just go back to sleep—”

Harley clicked his lantern on. “There’s no real point in tryin’ to convince me to sleep now, y’know.” He smiled, crooked. “You’ve got me curious.”

Peter sighed. “I just … I feel … I feel like I’m being watched. Like … there’s so much in the woods around us, and after those stories—I mean, yours was more just … sad, but … it’s the anticipation for what’s in the stories, too? Like so many horror stories are about claustrophobia that I start thinking about what if someone tells one that is about claustrophobia, and then I’m already thinking about—about—” He took a steadying breath. “The building. And. Being stuck under it. Even without anyone mentioning it. But being out here, somewhere—so full of noise and—I can hear—so many things dying, and I’m the only one that can hear them, or that—that cares about hearing them, because—I mean the owl only cares insofar as it is killing something, it doesn’t care about hearing the—the last shriek from the chipmunk, and I just—”

“Breathe, Peter. It’s okay, darlin’. Just breathe.”

Peter blinked away tears. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I just—there’s a lot, so much, around us, and I can hear so much of it that it’s like it’s listening to me back, like it’s watching me too, and then—thinking about being stuck, or being trapped, or—or even loving someone to the point of becoming someone they don’t love anymore, that’s—and MJ tells such good horror stories. About being watched, being hunted, about the unknown or about the other and just how other it _is—”_ He stopped. Stared at his hands. “I just … start thinking about things before they even happen until I get so—worked up about them that I—I don’t know.” He swallowed.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Harley said, voice soft—deliberate now, rather than from sleep. “What can I do to help?”

Peter flushed. “I, uh—I don’t know, I—”

“Peter. I’m offerin’. It’s not a bother.”

“I mean … if you talk, then I can focus on your voice instead of everything that’s happening in the woods.” Peter picked at his sleeves. “But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Harley smiled. “That’s it? You don’t even want to zip our sleepin’ bags together or anythin’?”

“Uh, I, um, I mean—” Peter’s face burned. “What?”

“I’m teasin’.” Peter deflated a little. “But if you think it would help, I wouldn’t be opposed.” He looked up to see Harley smiling at him. “C’mon, we’ll zip them together and I’ll talk about my latest project in the works until you fall asleep, yeah?”

“Uh, y-yeah, okay. Sounds good.”


End file.
